The Red Wish
by doryphore
Summary: I wished on a shooting star for Edward Cullen to come back. And he did.
1. chapter one

**A/N: **Set during New Moon-ish. There will be much more J/B in the upcoming chapters, I promise.

**chapter one**

The day that Edward came back, Jacob and I were lying in the back of my truck, trying to count the stars. There was light pollution in Forks, but it wasn't as bad as in La Push, so the sky was almost littered with stars. It was weird to think how little attention I ever gave the night sky and lying out here, my arm brushing Jacob's warm one, they were possibly the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

"And that one," he pointed and squinted, "That one's part of the Little Dipper. See how it's like a little cup at the end?"

I wanted to laugh. "Jake, you're pointing with your puny hand at the whole night sky. I couldn't possibly see what you are talking about."

He rolled his eyes and grabbed my arm, his sunshine-hot skin burning mine. He pointed with my hand toward what he'd been talking about and said, "You gotta squint a little bit. See it? Right there?"

I shot up from the truck bed and my arm slipped from his grasp. "I saw a shooting star! I've never seen one before. Did you see it, did you see it?"

He laughed, that barking loud Jake laugh. "Make a wish."

And I did. I was so stupid that I actually did. Maybe he heard me, wherever the hell he was. Brazil or Kansas or Zimbabwe or Italy. I told myself I didn't care. That I was strong and I didn't miss him when I had my own personal sun right here beside me. I didn't need any frozen skin or over-protectiveness.

But it was a reflex, something I'd been wishing for since he'd gone away: I wished for Edward Cullen to come back. And he did.

* * *

><p>The next day at school, no shiny black Volvo came rolling down the street. No perfectly-coiffed Cullens strode from the car, looking as if they were all sharing some secret joke. None of Jasper's strained smiles or Alice's happy ones, none of Rosalie's disdained lip-purses or Emmett's playful punches. There was only Edward, riding up on a jet-black racing motorcycle as I parked my car and readied myself for the last month of my senior year.<p>

I should've felt it, his coming back. I'd prayed for it for months and months, even resorting to consulting an actual God in my brain about it. I'd hoped and wished and here it was. I didn't even recognize him until it occurred to me that Jacob was not nearly that pale, nor that short, when he pulled up next to me on the bike.

Then he took his helmet off.

My eyes processed it before my brain did. My body went stiff, like my blood had frozen inside of my veins. He looked _different_, which seemed wrong to me. Edward never looked different; he hadn't changed in nearly one hundred years. But he apparently had, judging by the motorcycle jacket and the fact that he'd buzzed off most of his hair. It would be that short for all of eternity or until his death, whichever came first. And his face, something about the way he held his lips, was unusual as well. Like he was trying to hold back a smirk, instead of that carved, jaw-clenched expression I'd always come to associate with him.

From inside the car, his smell did not make my senses go haywire. In here, he was not the cell phone to my airplane gear. He was only Edward, with shorter hair. And in that moment, I absolutely hated him.

How dare he come back here, and smiling, nonetheless? As if he had something to be proud of, for abandoning me and making me look like an absolute idiot? I had felt no anger then, but it bubbled up inside of me now, unfreezing the ice inside my veins. I was almost over him and here he was, parading around Forks on a MOTORCYCLE with a HAIRCUT and I was just supposed to, what? Pretend that he hadn't absolutely crushed me?

He would not get the satisfaction of seeing me upset, I decided, even though it would've satisfied the animal anger inside of me to scream at him. No, I would completely ignore him. I would walk past him and pretend I had never met him, like he was just a bump in my life that I'd already gotten over.

Still, I didn't move from the car. He moved, though. He flipped up the motorcycle seat and shoved his helmet down in there. He made sure the kickstand would hold it upright. He pulled out his keys. He did everything in the wrong order and I watched him, wondering when his eyes would land on me.

And then they did. And they were bright red.


	2. chapter two

**chapter two**

Edward eats people.

Okay, I can deal with that. He told me once that he'd done it during his rebellious phase, but only bad people. Only murderers and rapists. That's fine. And he'd never, in a million years, bite me. This is Edward. Even if he left me in the middle of the woods curled in the fetal position and invaded my brain for the months afterward, I didn't think he'd been lying when he told me he loved me. What would be the point?

But he'd eaten people. Not in the distant past, not in the Roaring Twenties, jumping from speakeasy rooftop to speakeasy rooftop and catching men who preyed on young flappers. No, he'd done it recently. And with his eyes red like that, he looked almost as dangerous as he'd always told me he was.

That smirk turned into a grin and he started towards me.

This is a dream, I told myself. A dream, a dream, a dream. In any second, I will wake up in a cold sweat, screaming from seeing his face, and Charlie would rush into my bedroom to see if I was okay.

I got out of the car and took a shaky breath. "Edward, what're you doing here?"

His smile widened. I wished I could say that I wasn't happy to see him, to see his perfect skin and perfect hair and perfect everything, but that would've been a huge lie. And when his smell washed over me, I could've melted for it. I'd thought about seeing him again a million and a half times, but every plan I might've had went out the window. I still loved him. I still did.

But his _eyes_. He'd eaten people. Edward, the poster child for the vegetarian vampiric lifestyle, who'd come fairly close to actually having sex with a human and sworn up and down that he'd never drink another human's blood, not for as long as he still lived (he'd chuckled on that part, saying, "What a terrible description of my existence. I was never really alive until I met you, Bella. Isn't that ironic, since this entire time, I've actually been dead?")

He must've noticed the horror on my face. "Oh, Bella, it really isn't what it looks like."

"Oh? Then what is it?"

He looked around us, at the students milling in the parking lot. "All of them are ithinking/i about us, Bella. We need to go somewhere else."

And then the battle inside of me became a war. I shouldn't go with him—what if he hurt me? But this was Edward and he smelled so good and he looked like a statue, he was so absolutely perfect, standing there in front of me. But he'd broken my heart, that bastard! And now he was eating people! I really shouldn't go with him. Bad idea. But there was no way he could eat me. He'd had plenty of chances and he definitely wouldn't just ask me if that's what he wanted to do.

"We can take the truck if you like," he said.

"Okay," I said. I wanted to punch myself for agreeing, but I had to get him away from all of these people. If he wasn't a vegetarian anymore, he could kill any of my friends, even—

Oh no, the treaty. He'd broken the treaty.

I hauled open the car door and got inside woodenly, my heart working hard in my chest. He crossed the front of the car and opened the passenger door. The way he slid inside astounded me, because I'd forgotten the fluid way he moved. My mind found the thoughts it always did when he was around, the admiration that bordered a little too much on crazy obsession, and I realized for the first time that he wasn't absolutely perfect. He'd killed someone. And even if the way he looked and smelled was like lightning striking in the same place twice, he was still a monster. Like Jake had always told me and like I had always denied.

"I've missed you, Bella," he said, focusing those bloodred eyes on me. "You don't know how much."

I swallowed and forced myself to back out of the parking spot without looking at him. "Really," I said. He'd left me and he was the one who had done the missing?

"Really," he repeated velvetly. I snuck a glance over at him and he was staring at me, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth. "Bella, there's so much I have to tell you."

I focused on the road and soon we were out of the school parking lot, going down one of those tree-lined, two-laned roads that crisscrossed Forks and La Push. Every so often, Edward would tell me to turn right or left and within ten minutes, I was utterly lost. The road ended eventually at a campground that bordered La Push and I realized how close we were going to the treaty line. So that's what Edward wanted to do—die. He'd broken one part of the treaty, why not break the second one?

I turned the engine off and fixed my eyes on him. "Now tell me what's going on." I tried to say it forcefully, but it didn't come out that way. It came out meek and halting, like I was afraid. I was afraid, I realized. Afraid of Edward, for the first time ever.

He sighed and shifted in the bucket seat. "Before you assume the worst, I didn't kill a human."

I let out a puff of air. "Then why…"

"I bit a vampire."

The words hung in the air, absurd and impossible and completely unexplained. I gaped at him, open-mouthed. "This… happened because you killed a vampire?"

"It's a long story," he said.

I sat back in my seat. "I've been waiting a long time."

He reached out his icy hand toward me and I pulled away. My reflexes had never been so fast. I didn't want him to touch me, I realized. I didn't want the love of my life to touch me.

He swallowed and straightened up in his seat. "I understand, Bella. What I did to you was inexcusable and I don't expect you to forgive me. But that's not why I came here. I came here to warn you."

"What are you talking about?" I asked. My imagination fashioned a gigantic mega-vampire stomping through the forest toward Forks.

He leaned toward me a little bit, his face stony. "Something big is about to happen, Bella. And I don't know if I'm enough to protect you."


End file.
